Hi, im trying to script an remote outpost building (for building an outpost out of your supply network). After the script looked good i tried to use it and found out that you cant select planets you dont have outposted or colonized for bringing up the production dialog.

Did I do something wrong or is this not possible/intentional?

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Furthermore, I propse... we should default to four combat rounds instead of three ...for the good of playerkind.

I think that currently the human client UI takes a small bit of a shortcut in deciding when & what to present as construction options at a given planet, and won't present anything if you don't own the planet, regardless of whether the "Location" criteria for the item specifies that ownership is necessary. For a long long time, there was no way for any such item to get any PP if you didn't own the planet, so it was pretty much a non-issue.

That UI shortcut very well may change at some point, and perhaps it is about time, now that we no longer have overlapping supply, and also have the IS.

One type of project that has been contemplated for a long time which would require that to change is an Espionage project, which would probably be "built" at an enemy planet; that could possibly rely on the IS now (although it would still require a small bit of reworking some ProductionQueue code in addition to the UI).

Another long-contemplated idea that would require that to change is remote-outposting/colonization.

What was the thing you were exploring building at non-owned planets?

If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

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To outpost a planet (either within or outside supply) I use outpost ships.
To colonise outside supply I must use colony ships (built on colonies of the desired species) since outposting+<species colony building> does not work outside supply.
Why would I need to outpost a planet without ships?
And if it was possible, assuming you need vision of the planet to do it (otherwise it would be insanely OP), would this mean you could be building outposts (that provide supply even to Sly) at any system you can see, freeing you from the need to build any ship or research any supply or stealth tech in order to expand if you have enough stockpiling output?

Building on planets you don't own is currently not possible. Making that possible (which requires changes to the C++ code) would introduce issues, e.g. how to handle conflicts if two or more empires start building things on the same planet. The restriction to only be able to build on planets you own is there for good reason. This shouldn't be changed without a very good reason.

Dilvish wrote:For a long long time, there was no way for any such item to get any PP if you didn't own the planet, so it was pretty much a non-issue.

Why would that have been an issue? If the planet in question is supply connected to your empire, it should be able to receive PP - no?

One type of project that has been contemplated for a long time which would require that to change is an Espionage project, which would probably be "built" at an enemy planet

That would be the type of thing not being build with PP, but an Influence project being funded with IP. I fully expect Influence projects to be able to target planets you don't own.

But I don't see any reason why we should enable producing buildings on planets you don't own. As Oberlus already said, build an outpost ship, plant an outpost on the planet in question, and you can build whatever you want there. If you can't do that (for whatever reason, planet not reachable, planet stealthed, etc.), you shouldn't be able to build there anyway?

Vezzra wrote:e.g. how to handle conflicts if two or more empires start building things on the same planet.

That particular conflict is resolved quite handily by the current supply competition mechanic, so long as you forbade such items from drawing on the IS. We also manage to resolve how to deal with two empires trying to colonize a planet at the same time, it's not as if such hurdles have ever seemed insurmountable

The restriction to only be able to build on planets you own is there for good reason. This shouldn't be changed without a very good reason.

The competing production issue, which is now essentially solved, is the only "structural" design consideration I recall as blocking such construction; it always seemed to me that the biggest block was the lack of a UI mechanism for initiating such builds. Even that has a pretty reasonable and easy solution I think. But it seems there is not even much point in exploring that just now, and I certainly have plenty of other things to work on.

Dilvish wrote:For a long long time, there was no way for any such item to get any PP if you didn't own the planet, so it was pretty much a non-issue.

Why would that have been an issue? If the planet in question is supply connected to your empire, it should be able to receive PP - no?

Planets you don't own are not really supply connected for Production purposes, even if their system already provides fleet supply; they are not part of any of your empire's resource groups through which PP is distributed. I'm not saying that the programming hurdles for resolving such are, or even were, huge. It was simply an existing constraint whose presence made another constraint not add an observable difference.

If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

Vezzra wrote:But I don't see any reason why we should enable producing buildings on planets you don't own. As Oberlus already said, build an outpost ship, plant an outpost on the planet in question, and you can build whatever you want there. If you can't do that (for whatever reason, planet not reachable, planet stealthed, etc.), you shouldn't be able to build there anyway?

Well the same argument applies in the colony buildings vs colony ships discussion, right? And colony buildings are a really good solution.
So I think this particular argument in itself does not have so much weight.

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Furthermore, I propse... we should default to four combat rounds instead of three ...for the good of playerkind.

assuming you need vision of the planet to do it (otherwise it would be insanely OP), would this mean you could be building outposts (that provide supply even to Sly) at any system you can see, freeing you from the need to build any ship or research any supply or stealth tech in order to expand if you have enough stockpiling output?

For the remote outposting i wanted to add restrictions (e.g. make it slower if its further away from your supply network), but yes, this could open up new and different ways to do outposting (e.g. it could be a way to "sneak" past enemies if we wanted that).

But we could restrict it in a way that it is basically like using outpost ships without outpost ships; similar to building colonies without colony ships; that would mean: maximum out-of-supply distance based on your ship and fuel techs and building time/cost based on non-blocked closest distance to a shipyard; it should be cheaper to build a remote outpost than an outpost ship in that case because it removes some micromanagement.

We could maybe also get rid of the outposting base hull .. build a 1PP outpost kernel building using the stockpile to claim that planet and then you have a supply connection.
One step closer to getting rid of comsats

The meta-idea was exploring ways to make stockpile useful in normal game. Having your planets on stockpiling just in case sucks (because you get nothing back for your investment). We could sweeten the hit by making the stockpile more useful.

Dilvish wrote:

Vezzra wrote:e.g. how to handle conflicts if two or more empires start building things on the same planet.

That particular conflict is resolved quite handily by the current supply competition mechanic, so long as you forbade such items from drawing on the IS. We also manage to resolve how to deal with two empires trying to colonize a planet at the same time, it's not as if such hurdles have ever seemed insurmountable

With empires competing for an outpost on a planet it could be: as long as there is no outpost or colony you can build there. If you finish earlier, then your outpost gets built, the others loose their investment. What happens if multiple empires finish in the outpost building in the same turn? We could roll a dice. Or make it an independent outpost (so an empire would need to send troops to claim it). Or if we have rebels, the unfinished outposts could be converted into rebels.
I think we could solve such problems for each building. I think you would need to "unlock" the planet for most other buildings (by building the outpost).

For UI I think it should check the location condition of the buildings. If there are no buildings which can be build there, you cant select the planet. (Or maybe you should be able to select it so you can check why you cant build your outpost building there)

Dilvish wrote:For a long long time, there was no way for any such item to get any PP if you didn't own the planet, so it was pretty much a non-issue.

And now there is the imperial stockpile.

I think the technical main issues are:

minor UI: at the moment its nice that you cant select unowned planets by mistake

somebody would need to implement it just for prototyping

a way to script competition away (what should happen with enemy buildings if the building gets build; if its only outposting this could be hardcoded though)

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Furthermore, I propse... we should default to four combat rounds instead of three ...for the good of playerkind.

Ophiuchus wrote:(e.g. make it slower if its further away from your supply network)

If you are wanting to experiment, I would strongly recommend sticking to restricting it to be within the fleet-supplied-systems; if you were to allow remote outposting of unowned planets that are not even within fleet-supply, then you'd still have the old problem of resolving what to do if multiple empires wanted to remote-outpost the same place at the same time. While there are surely other ways to solve that problem besides relying on the current supply-competition mechanic, that would open up an unneeded can or worms that would likely waste a lot of time and/or just make it more likely for the whole idea to be shot down.

Restricting it to fleet-supplied systems would drastically restrict its early game use by empires with bad-supply colonizers like the Sly, but other things could be done to make up for that for them (like giving them a way to make stealthed colony ships, although that might possibly be too OP)

If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

Vezzra wrote:But I don't see any reason why we should enable producing buildings on planets you don't own. As Oberlus already said, build an outpost ship, plant an outpost on the planet in question, and you can build whatever you want there. If you can't do that (for whatever reason, planet not reachable, planet stealthed, etc.), you shouldn't be able to build there anyway?

Well the same argument applies in the colony buildings vs colony ships discussion, right? And colony buildings are a really good solution.
So I think this particular argument in itself does not have so much weight.

except a colony building does not move a planet from "unowned"->"owned" only ships (outpost/colony/troops) do that

There is no need for building stuff on planets you don't own (Unowened Building for short). UB does not fix any problem. Expansion behind enemy lines is already possible with stealth ships (IS already has a role on that strategy, obviously, and it is a viable strategy already). Plus UB is against the normal (and nice) mechanics of FO. Having to research stealth hulls, ship stealth parts and supply range techs is part of the fun of the game. If UB is implemented in a way that it is a viable option compared to the standard ways of expansion (i.e. ships and the associated techs), UB could make all that unnecessary, or less interesting if properly balanced (which I doubt is possible).
And I think you have not think seriously about the implication of this last suggestions. Being able to claim a planet in range would be insanely OP: you can pass through monsters and enlarge your supply range at an absurd speed, because each remote outpost you build also gives reach to more remote outposting, snowballing. I don't think this needs any playtesting...
Unless the implementation makes the remote building very slow, like x3 the time needed to build outpost ship and send it, at least 15 or 20 turns to complete regardless of IS output ratio, and more expensive than building outpost ships, x2 its cost at least. Then it would be an expensive and fancy mechanic that you would only use when having spare PPs or planning to do something behind enemy lines, instead of exploiting expansion, and even then I wonder what's the gain the game gets from it and how you will explain how is performed the outposting of the planet if there is no one in there to work (IS not only provides stealth means of resources transportation but also workforce?). I don't like the idea, seems quite disruptive for what I expect.

"Building" influence projects on unowned (or owned by others) planets is a whole different story.

Vezzra wrote:But I don't see any reason why we should enable producing buildings on planets you don't own. As Oberlus already said, build an outpost ship, plant an outpost on the planet in question, and you can build whatever you want there. If you can't do that (for whatever reason, planet not reachable, planet stealthed, etc.), you shouldn't be able to build there anyway?

Well the same argument applies in the colony buildings vs colony ships discussion, right? And colony buildings are a really good solution.
So I think this particular argument in itself does not have so much weight.

except a colony building does not move a planet from "unowned"->"owned" only ships (outpost/colony/troops) do that

?? I am not sure what you are getting at ??

Before there were no colony buildings and colonization got a lot better by introducing them (removed lots of redundant decisions). Look up the discussions to understand what I meant.

And at the time Vezzras argument could have been made as a counter to colony buildings:
"I don't see why we should enable colonizing planets without ships. Build a colony ship, send it to the planet in question, plant it and there you are with your colony. If you can't do that (for whatever reason, planet not reachable, planet stealthed, etc.), you shouldn't be able to colonize there anyway?"

That anti-colony argument is as we know for a fact wrong. So I say this anti-outpost argument is similar.

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Furthermore, I propse... we should default to four combat rounds instead of three ...for the good of playerkind.

Ophiuchus wrote:(e.g. make it slower if its further away from your supply network)

If you are wanting to experiment, I would strongly recommend sticking to restricting it to be within the fleet-supplied-systems; if you were to allow remote outposting of unowned planets that are not even within fleet-supply, then you'd still have the old problem of resolving what to do if multiple empires wanted to remote-outpost the same place at the same time. While there are surely other ways to solve that problem besides relying on the current supply-competition mechanic, that would open up an unneeded can or worms that would likely waste a lot of time and/or just make it more likely for the whole idea to be shot down.

I agree that its right to explore the idea (and UI) is remote-outposting in-supply. I think it could have a simliar effect like the colonisation buildings. If I have time I will put up a "outpost building" blueprint and PR.

But in-supply building wont help making the stockpile focus more useful. And for building outside of supply it needs competition arbitration somehow.

Restricting it to fleet-supplied systems would drastically restrict its early game use by empires with bad-supply colonizers like the Sly, but other things could be done to make up for that for them (like giving them a way to make stealthed colony ships, although that might possibly be too OP)

Well for bad-supply species like Sly out-of-supply outposting sucks anyway. Because it wouldnt allow you to build colonies without supply-connection. So in 95% of the time you would need colony ships anyway.

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Furthermore, I propse... we should default to four combat rounds instead of three ...for the good of playerkind.